H I S T O R I C R U M T R A I L
NEVIS: A BIRTHPLACE OF RUM
The history of rum production, an outgrowth of the lucrative international trade of sugar is intertwined the history of slavery in the West Indies. It was the labor and artisan knowledge of the enslaved population that was exploited by colonial land barons and merchants to grow, harvest and process sugar cane. Laborers pressed sugar cane and boiled the juices and strained the concoction leaving the syrupy byproduct called molasses behind. The dark colored raw sugar would be packed into hogshead barrels for shipping to Europe where it would be purified, repackaged, and branded for commercial markets. The molasses was discarded.
It was the enslaved workers in the Caribbean sugar industry who recognized that the waste molasses could be fermented to make an alcohol, and it is hotly debated by historians as to whether that initial invention of this spirit happened on the island of Nevis or the island of Barbados. A French naturalist named Caesar Rochefort visited Nevis in 1649 and wrote that Nevisians distilled a "delicious liquor made of sugar cane," in 1651 a reference to the "hot, hellish, terrible liquor" shows up in a description of Barbardos. The identity of the inventors and the original name of the drink are now forgotten but when it reached the sailors it was nicknamed “kill-devil” and “rumbullion,” and by the 1650s it had spread throughout the Caribbean and was known simply as “rum.”
The rum was soon mixed with local citrus fruits and the British navy adopted the combination as part of sailors’ rations in 1655 to replace the less stable grogs made from beer or wine. The drink became so popular that in 1664 (the year that the British government purchased New York from the Dutch) a rum distillery was set up on Staten Island, New York and the drink’s popularity made its way into commercial centers of North America and Europe. The export of molasses from the Caribbean to port cities worldwide would persist for centuries taking on many connotations, showing up in the legends of pirates of the Atlantic World to the lore of the gangsters of Prohibition in the United States.
As a birthplace of rum, it is fitting that on the island of Nevis, you can still find classic rum punch (or a modern spin) served in every establishment.
It was the enslaved workers in the Caribbean sugar industry who recognized that the waste molasses could be fermented to make an alcohol, and it is hotly debated by historians as to whether that initial invention of this spirit happened on the island of Nevis or the island of Barbados. A French naturalist named Caesar Rochefort visited Nevis in 1649 and wrote that Nevisians distilled a "delicious liquor made of sugar cane," in 1651 a reference to the "hot, hellish, terrible liquor" shows up in a description of Barbardos. The identity of the inventors and the original name of the drink are now forgotten but when it reached the sailors it was nicknamed “kill-devil” and “rumbullion,” and by the 1650s it had spread throughout the Caribbean and was known simply as “rum.”
The rum was soon mixed with local citrus fruits and the British navy adopted the combination as part of sailors’ rations in 1655 to replace the less stable grogs made from beer or wine. The drink became so popular that in 1664 (the year that the British government purchased New York from the Dutch) a rum distillery was set up on Staten Island, New York and the drink’s popularity made its way into commercial centers of North America and Europe. The export of molasses from the Caribbean to port cities worldwide would persist for centuries taking on many connotations, showing up in the legends of pirates of the Atlantic World to the lore of the gangsters of Prohibition in the United States.
As a birthplace of rum, it is fitting that on the island of Nevis, you can still find classic rum punch (or a modern spin) served in every establishment.
"Rum, alas Kill Devil, is much ador'd by the American English. [It] is held as the Comforter of their Souls, the Preserver of their Bodys, the Remover of their Cares." - Edward Ward, 1699
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A SMALL BATCH ARTISANAL RUM
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